"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?"
asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the
women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory
will be theirs as well."

Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world"
was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the
"Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.

Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of
Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of
their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to
teach the Islamic world?

"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles
Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin
doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."

But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation
he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians,
Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.

What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and
teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms
in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?

If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty
Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it
on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and
Hillary?

In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in
every culture, in every time and in every place."

But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of
homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative
Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.

The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral
truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on
in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and
what we stand for as a people.

What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into
imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.

In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell
you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values
is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward.
These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak
universal truths."

But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the
values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic
revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot
win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war.
It is not our war.

When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First
Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie
to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic
faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty
to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?

When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment
prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten
Commandments in school?

If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is
inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization
come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he
is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in
Fallujah.

Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in
cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books,
magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are
as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in
the Opium Wars.

A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's
"emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that
hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be
seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding
into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of
"American values."